Wednesday, September 24, 2008

More Details on Paisley Cave Discovery

University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins hands a heat-measuring device to a fellow excavator at the Paisley Caves.

The Associated Press has updated an earlier news report that I posted on Ancient Tides in June regarding the discovery in Paisley, Oregon, of ancient human feces with viable DNA. The discovery has enabled scientist to pinpoint the existence of humans in North America some 14,300 years ago. That’s 1,000 years earlier than the Clovis people, earlier thought to be the continent’s first humans.

3 comments:

A flint spearhead discovered in 1933 at an archeolgical dig near Clovis in New Mexico was hailed as the most ancient human artifact ever found in North or South America.The blade was sharpened on both sides,and it was clearly design to kill.Indeed,it had killed.Besides the spearpoint was found the sceleton of woolly mammoth,which was presumed to have died from the weapon and was estimated to be 11,500 old.This dating the hunter as the oldest known American;his people the Adam and Eve of the New World.It was noted that the spread of the "Clovis people"/no one knew what else to cal them/concided with the sudden extinction of all colosal animals of North America.Not just the mammoth,but the giant armadillo,giant sloth and the great black bear.Whoever the Clovis people were ,they were not afraid to take on big game and their two -edged spears were devastatingly letal.Spearpoints similar to the Clovis hunters were foud in Siberia,near where the land bridge was before flooded/at that time the sea levels were 90 m-300ft lower than today/This part of Siberia was inhabited by a culture known as the Dyuktai;could they be the Clovis people?? If they were,there is no trace of them left today.Chromosomal studies conducted in the last few yeras point to a different part of eastern Eurasia as the origin of today,s Native Americans.Their DNA shows a close link with people from Mongolia.This genetic clue is backed up by a suprising piese of fisical evidence:something in the mongolian smile.Some Native Americans have a destintive "shovelshaped"tooth that is also found in present-day Mongolians.This cannot be a coincidence;it can only be the result of family resemblance.But while some archeologists worked to find the people who wiped out the mammmoth,others made their business to demolish the Clovis Barier altogether.This new generation claimed that there was plenty of evidence of human presence in both of Americas long before the "Clovis people".The argument became so heated that American paleoanthropologists offen define themselves as belonging either to the Clovis or to the "preClovis camp.The pre-Clovis camp don,t agree with each other.All they have in common is the conviction that there were humans in Americas before 10,ooo BC.Their theories are bewilderingly contradictory.Let have a quick look of some of those. 1. AINU -An ethnic minority in Japan ,it is currently proposed that they may share ancestry with Sioux,Blackfoot and Cheroke 2.Inuit-The inuit are related to the Chukchi,who still live nomadic life in Siberia. 3.Blackfoot -Skull measurements have suggested that the Blackfoot,Sioux and Cherokee could have come from Japan.4.Apache -Apache and Navajo ar ethnically distinct from other Native Americans.One researches suggests taht their language has Sino-Tibetan roots. 5.Yanomani Genetic matches with Inuit of the north show taht the Yanomani must have originated in north-east Asia and moved south into Brazil. As you can see there is no simple answer ;who came first to America?There is another aproach to this question.Who are the truly native Americans?We can say that there is in a sence ,no such person.EVERYONE who has ever lived on the American continents-from Alaska to Tiera del Fuego/Chille/,from the Stone Age to the current Space age-is an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. And i think that is actually something on which all the archaeologist agree. Ludmil Marcov-an immigrant.

Hello, Amigo: I have an odd confession. I failed to turn on the email notification whenever I get a comment on this blog, so I've been unaware when you and some others have left comments. I just noticed this a few hours ago.

In looking back over several posts, I see you've left very informative and interesting comments that fill in considerable information.

I want to spend some quality time reading through your comments and perhaps replying to them. I hope that some other readers of Ancient Tides are more observant than I've been!

Thank you, Ludmil, for taking so much time and energy to contribute to my blogs.

Dear Wordsmith i would like to compare your trade to a wise man who put his thoughts in bottles and sail them away in the Ocean of Internet. No one can predict when the capsule of knowledge will wash of on the shores!No one can tell who,when and how it will affect them.Sometimes the massage struck a nerve and beg to be reply immediately,or sometimes it takes time to ferment like a good wine and come out when it is mature enough to be shared.So the comments are always open,they are not like closed page of the History or Nature book.I think the most wonderful thing is about sharing the vast knowledge about our Universe with likely minded souls.So Greg keep putting those messages in bottles and give us the wonderful gift off Discovery. So many blogs not enough time.

Tides represent the high and low, the ebb and flow. They're the rhythm spanning millennia and an apt image for this blog as it seeks to provide accounts linking today with ages long past. New archaeological finds and scholarly speculations help us better understand our ancestors and this small planet we've shared. And the better we understand our forebears and their environs, the better we know ourselves.

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